BSO/Classical New England — 2020/02/15

For the final Saturday before the live BSO subscription concerts resume, WCRB has chosen to present the Tanglewood concert of Saturday, August 10, 2019. The orchestra's performance detail page gives us the basics and links to background information:

The 2019 Tanglewood season will also see the BSO and Tanglewood debut of Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, who leads the orchestra on Saturday, August 10, in Carreño’s Margaritena, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Nikolai Lugansky, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 1.

(Some emphasis added.)

On their page about the concert, WCRB has a link to an interview with the conductor.

The Boston Globe has a noncommittal review, which I find interesting because it mentions two horn players. I posted a very brief preview back in August.

It should be a pleasant evening this evening at 8:00 and again on February 24 at 8:00 p.m., EST, over WCRB.

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/02/08

WCRB has picked a good concert from last summer to rebroadcast and stream this evening and again on February 17 at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time. It's the concert that was given on August 4. Yefim Bronfman is piano soloist and Dima Slobodeniouk is conductor the the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto № 3 and Sibelius Symphony № 1. While neither is on my "must listen" list, the concerto is highly regarded, and I like listening to Sibelius. WCRB doesn't seem to have any links to further material on their page about the concert. The BSO's performance detail page is also pretty "bare bones" but it does have links for the performers and the Rachmaninoff concerto.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer did not review the concert. The Globe is favorable, but with reservations — not a rave. I posted a preview, but it adds nothing to what's in this post.

My recommendation on balance: give it a listen if you can. Go to WCRB. As always, the home page links other features.

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/02/01

The BSO had scheduled a tour to the Far East. The coronavirus panic has scuttled thos plans, but they have no concerts scheduled in Symphony Hall until February 21, with the next Saturday concert on the 22nd. So WCRB is following their usual procedure of retransmitting past concerts. This evening — and again on Monday, Feb. 10 — it is a concert from last summer at Tanglewood, specifically the concert of August 2, 2019.

Here's WCRB's summary on their BSO page:

Saturday at 8pm in an encore broadcast from the 2019 Tanglewood season, the American violinist is the soloist in Dvorák’s folk-infused Violin Concerto, and Ken-David Masur leads the BSO in the Czech composer's Symphony No. 8.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
(encore broadcast Monday, February 10)
8:00 PM
Recorded August 2, 2019
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Ken-David Masur, conductor
Joshua Bell, violin
MARTINŮ Memorial to Lidice
DVOŘÁK Violin Concerto
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8

Of course Ken-David Masur conducts all three pieces, not just the concluding symphony.

I'm having trouble accessing prior posts, but I'm confident I posted about it back then, and you can find all the usual links for Tanglewood concerts there,

As always, you can listen to it on line or on air at WCRB.

Enjoy!

BSO — 2020/01/25

The Dvořák is a familiar "warhorse." The stuff before the intermission could be interesting. Performance detail says:

Continuing the BSO’s cycle of music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Rudolf Barshai’s string-orchestra arrangement of the composer’s Eighth String Quartet, Op. 110 (1960), which the composer suggested was his most autobiographical work. (Barshai was an important conductor and champion of Shostakovich’s music; Op. 110a was the first and most important of several arrangements of Shostakovich’s string quartets.) Completing the program are Samuel Barber’s Medea’s Mediation and Dance of Vengeance, a 15-minute concert work excerpted from a 1946 ballet score for the choreographer Martha Graham, and Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the most important piece he composed during his years in the U.S., when he was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The beloved four-movement symphony uses musical elements shared by both North American and Czech folk music

(Some emphasis added.)

It's too late for me to find and link reviews. It's on WCRB this evening and Monday week as usual.

BSO — 2020/01/18

There is new music (pretty good, IMO), familiar Mozart music, and unfamiliar Tchaikovsky music in this week's Boston Symphony concert. The performance detail page (for once listing the pieces in the order they will be performed — now that wasn't so hard, was it?) tells us:

Making his subscription series debut with these concerts, BSO Assistant Conductor Yu-An Chang, who is from Taiwan, leads the world premiere of a new BSO-commissioned work by the prominent Taiwanese-American composer Chihchun Chi-sun Lee. Austrian pianist Till Fellner makes his second appearances with the BSO as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, the biggest, most symphonic, and most contrapuntally intricate of his concertos. Compared to his five other symphonies, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 3 (the nickname “Polish” was not the composer’s own) is rarely performed; the BSO last played it in Symphony Hall in 1995. The symphony is, unusually, in five movements, three of which are strongly dance-oriented.

(All emphasis added.)

The title of the new piece is "Formosan Triptych," and there is plenty of descriptive material available via links from the performance detail page, WCRB, and the Boston Musical Intelligencer.

I couldn't be there on Thursday, but I exchanged my ticket and attended the Friday afternoon performance, which I enjoyed. The "Formosan Triptych" was never unpleasant to listen to. I caught some of what the program notes mention ( e.g., horn player Jason Snider and tuba player Mike Roylance blowing through their instruments), but other things I could only guess at. Even if the criticisms in the Intelligencer are fair, I wasn't at all unhappy with what I heard in the Mozart and Tchaikovsky. BTW, the conductor was very animated, using big, fluid gestures to direct the orchestra.

The review in the Globe expresses dissatisfaction with how the Tchaikovsky was performed, but likes the Mozart. Of course, with a world premiere, a critic is in no position to say they got it wrong, and the reviews are mainly descriptive. As hinted earlier, the Intelligencer's reviewer was dissatisfied with how both the Mozart and Tchaikovsky were performed. On the Intelligencer's front page, you can also find interview articles with Ms. Lee and Mr. Fellner.

I think you'll like this concert, so I recommend listening over WCRB at 8:00, Boston Time, this evening, and again (same time) on Monday, January 27.

BSO — 2020/01/11

This evening the BSO gives us a Francophile's delight (unless your taste in French music runs more to Marc-Antoine Charpentier or Hector Berlioz): a French conductor, a French organist, and three French composers. Details and links are to be found, appropriately, on the orchestra's performance detail page, where we read:

French conductor Alain Altinoglu, who first conducted the BSO in spring 2017, returns with an all-French program featuring the debut of the outstanding French organist Thierry Escaich in two works showcasing the Symphony Hall organ. Francis Poulenc described his ambitious 1938 Organ Concerto as being close in intent to his religious music. The concerto was given its American premiere by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops with organist E. Power Biggs in 1941 in Symphony Hall. Closing the program is Camille Saint-Saëns’ popular, exuberant Symphony No. 3, which features the organ as a solo and orchestral instrument. Altinoglu also leads his own orchestral suite of music from Claude Debussy’s uniquely gorgeous and probing operatic masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Thursday concert was part of my subscription, but it was a cold night at the end of a cold snap, and Debussy and Poulenc aren't my favorite composers, and I've heard  the Saint-Saëns several times,so I decided to stay home. The rave reviews in the Globe and the Intelligencer tell me that I made a big mistake and that we should all be listening when WCRB broadcasts and streams it live this evening at 8:00 EST. This week they are promising the usual encore broadcast/webstream, on January 20. Check out their website for links to more about the concert, as well as other programming.

BSO — 2020/01/04

The BSO returns to Symphony Hall with a couple of familiar pieces and a pleasant enough curtain raiser to precede them. The performance detail page has the usual links and this description:

Former BSO assistant conductor Marcelo Lehninger, who last led the BSO in 2014, is joined by distinguished pianist Javier Perianes for Beethoven’s heaven-storming Piano Concerto No. 5. Completed in 1811, it was the composer’s final concerto, a work perfectly balancing virtuosity with substance and depth and epitomizing the composer’s “heroic” period. (Perianes last performed with the BSO in March 2016.) Beethoven’s bright, five-minute overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, composed in 1801, was part of his complete ballet score, the first music he ever wrote for the theater. Closing the program is Tchaikovsky’s 1888 Symphony No. 5, a work as intensely lyrical as it is powerful, which uses a recurring “fate theme” to unify all four movements.

(Some emphasis added.)

The piano concerto, nicknamed "Emperor" only in the English-speaking world, is one of my favorite pieces of music, so I really enjoyed the first half of the concert. While Tchaikovsky isn't that high on my list of favorites, his music isn't bad. All in all, it was a fine evening on Thursday when I attended the performance, likely my favorite concert of the season.

The reviewers weren't as happy as I was. The Globe found plenty to dislike about the playing of the Beethoven; the Intelligencer found fault with both halves of the concert, although also some good things as well, mostly with the Tchaikovsky. Maybe this is a case where you're happier if you're not too sophisticated. The only criticism I had was that the pianist seemed to be playing the left hand part too softly.

So I recommend it unreservedly. Listen in over WCRB at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time this evening. They don't seem to be promising a rebroadcast on Monday, the 13th. We'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, listen this evening to be sure you catch it.

Enjoy.

BSO/Classical New England — 2019/12/28

Next week, the BSO resumes their season at Symphony Hall. This week's "encore broadcast," while the Holiday Pops conclude, is the concert performed on January 26, 2019 — about 11 months ago. I think it's worth tuning in for the repeat. I wrote about it at the time, and you can go there for links to reviews as well as for my thoughts about it. Just to expand a bit: I thought "Ciel d'hiver" actually did  evoke a winter sky.

In case you don't feel like tracking down my post from last January, here's the synopsis from the performance detail page.

Making his BSO subscription series debut, conductor John Storgårds leads pianist Martin Helmchen in Mozart's gregarious, large-scale Piano Concerto in E-flat, K.482, composed in late 1785 when Mozart was also working on his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. The Finnish Storgårds also brings three Finnish works to Symphony Hall, beginning with Kaija Saariaho's gorgeous study of orchestral color Ciel d'hiver ("Winter Sky"), an arrangement of a movement from her earlier, symphony-like Orion. Jean Sibelius's final two symphonies, nos. 6 and 7, are two of the greatest works in the symphonic literature. Though very different from one another, both demonstrate the composer's distinctively rich orchestration and organic, fluid transformations of material.

(Some emphasis added.)

As always, you can hear it all on air or over the web on WCRB at 8:00 p.m. EST. They also have links to features about this concert and other broadcasts they offer.

BSO/Classical New England — 2019/12/14

Sorry I didn't have a chance to past about last week's "encore broadcast" concert.

Now that Holiday Pops has taken over Symphony Hall, WCRB takes us for a meander down our musical memory lane. This week we can hear the concert of November 10, 2018. It starts with the American premiere of a work co-commissioned by the BSO — Māra, by Andris Dzenītis. That is followed by Symphony No. 1 by Shostakovich. After intermission they play the music for the second act of Tchaikovsky's ever popular ballet, The Nutcracker, which may help encourage people to attend a performance of the full ballet, which Boston Ballet gives every December.

You can find a bit more information as well as the usual links at the performance detail page. My post at the time (with links to reviews) recommends listening, and I have no reason to change that recommendation. As always, you can hear it at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time, over WCRB online or on air.

I neglected to hit the "Publish" button on Saturday. I'm doing it now, Monday morning, for posterity and on the off chance that they'll retransmit the concert a week from today.

BSO — 2019/11/30

In 2008 I heard the Second Serenade by Brahms conducted by James Levine at Symphony Hall. I was delighted (which is not a word that normally fits my reaction to music of Brahms). If you listen, I'm confident you'll like it too. It opens the program, which continues with two pieces by Schumann. So we have a respite from music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Here's the synopsis from the performance detail page:

The German pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias returns to Symphony Hall as both conductor and pianist in a rarity for piano and orchestra by Robert Schumann, his Introduction and Allegro appassionato, which his wife Clara premiered with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig in 1850. The BSO has only played it on two occasions, both at Tanglewood more than 50 years ago. Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 was actually the second symphony he wrote. He completed its original version in 1841, just after finishing his Symphony No. 1, but was dissatisfied with it, publishing its revised, final form only a decade later. Schumann’s use of recurring thematic ideas creates an innovative, interconnected overall form. Opening the program is Brahms’ five-movement Serenade No. 2, substantial in length but generally light in mood, like the Classical-era serenades that were the composer’s models. Brahms omits violins from the orchestra for this piece, resulting in a mellow, dark-hued tone.

(Emphasis added.)

The reviewer in the Intelligencer liked the concert, especially the Schumann and recommends listening to it. I haven't found a review in the Globe yet.

I join with the reviewer in recommending that you listen to this one. It should be good all the way through (although I'm not actually familiar with the Schumann pieces). The show begins on WCRB at 8:00 p.m., EST, and will be repeated through the miracle of recording technology on December 9, also at 8:00.

Not to be missed. Enjoy!